60. Jon French - USA Veteran - Michigan Tech

Jon French joins the show to talk about all things hockey , UP , Operation Enduring Freedom , wounded in battle.

 https://www.pfnllc.net/

https://www.stormykromer.com/

https://www.facebook.com/wwia 

https://www.facebook.com/VISS12042013/

Edited & Produced by Daisie Media 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to the Trevor Buck Podcast, episode 60, and we have John French with us today. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Yes. Hey, now I want to ask you, uh, you grew up in Michigan? Uh yes, I did. Whereabouts?

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Oh, unfortunately, I grew up in uh River Michigan.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Uh in Saginaw.

unknown 0:33

I grew up on a farm just outside of Saginaw.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

And uh been residing in uh the upper peninsula for holy man. For a long time. Probably since ninety one or so, give or take.

unknown 0:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

And you played some hockey growing up.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Oh, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Okay, what what age did you start playing hockey?

SPEAKER_01 0:53

I started skiing when I was uh three or four.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

And uh just kind of grew up in the the local junior hockey association, played travel, played high school, uh drafted by CompuWare when I was fourteen and uh elected to play high school instead. And uh yeah, played some juniors and then uh did a couple years at tech and kind of played for the Pioneers after that.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Okay, so I wanna I want to ask you that. That's uh I'm glad you mentioned that. So when you were uh drafted by CompuWare, but you decided to stay in high school, what what made you make that decision?

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Oh, uh you know, I just kind of knew to the whole I mean, we played travel hockey, but uh, you know, as far as juniors, I knew it was a big deal, but I didn't know how big of a big deal it was in Triple A. And uh so when I was looking at I'd have to be c find a billet family and everything, and I was fourteen and and uh I just kind of well, you know, I'd rather stay home and and have like kind of a normal life. You know, like a regular high school kid, you know, rather than being on the road looking back, you know, I mean you take the good with the bad, but uh you know, you wonder where you've been, but I'm very, very happy for where I am now.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Well, you you still ended up at tech, so I imagine uh you're you know you did pretty well for yourself. And I want to ask you this because we have some uh friendly smack talk here on the podcast. With between the the youpers and the downstaters, the youpers think the best hockey players in Michigan are in the UP, and my buddies downstate say no, no, no. The best hockey players are downstate. So so growing up throughout your career in high school and whatnot, I I gotta get you to to chime in on this. Where are the best hockey players in Michigan from?

unknown 2:39

Oh, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

I mean, I think uh I mean look at the Olympic team right now, they have a lot of a lot of downstaters, but uh I remember when we went to the state quarterfinals, we had to play uh the Marquette Redmen or the Sentinels now.

unknown 2:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

And we played them over in the Sioux, and they were they were a dang good team, you know, and they knew everything about us, and then could they play hockey? I think we lost by uh I think they had an uh open netter goal at the end, but we lost by two altogether, so my my personal experience they beat us out of the state contention, so I'll just leave it at that. Oh bad there are some really good hockey players downstate.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Okay, so then then when you went up to Michigan Tech, how how did you make that decision? Like were you did you have other offers to go to school, or was there something about their uh education? What what made you decide to go to tech?

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Oh, I was uh I I don't I was just excited to go. Um I was seventeen, I was a seventeen year old freshman and I was physically and mentally a seventeen year old. So uh, you know, I came up and just you know, looking for girls and playing hockey and away from home and having a good time, I was pretty immature at the time. And uh so I came up, I had to leave. Uh fortunately I came in under girl brown, but uh my grades weren't there. I had great grades in high school, but Michigan Tech's a tough school and uh you have to study and if you at regular school, if you just if you don't have to study and you still get good grades, it's hard to figure out how to study on the fly to contend with some of the the uh students up here that are so so smart.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Sure. And and you got introduced to the Uper culture up there. What was that like?

SPEAKER_01 4:23

It was great. It was absolutely fantastic. Uh uh yeah, a lot of good people. Actually, uh guy named Scott Bersing, he's actually from uh went to the same high school. He was Michigan Tech's uh one of their equipment managers, and I used to make my skates really sharp. And he said, Oh well, there's a guy in downtown Houghton, he lives uh just a few blocks up from the the old Hardy's, which is now the uh oh man, the the coffee shop down there, Baskin Robbins. And uh he says, Yeah, Joe Buckovich, he's in the he's in the phone book. Give him a call, he'll sharpen your skates. And so after uh after hockey every day or every other a couple days, I take my skates down to Joe Bukovich, uh, who lives in West Houghton, and he'd sharpen the skates for me.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

And and I'm really happy that you shared that story, and I shared offline. That's how this uh silly podcast room got started. My my buddy out here in Washington had bought a skate machine, he's from the UP, and I'd heard stories for years about all the youpers going to Joe Buck. And uh and so then I started calling my buddy, his name is Trevor, I started calling him Trevor Buck, and then that that's how we started this whole little brand and this company, so it's really awesome. But uh Joe, he had some uh some little one-liners. Do you remember any little one-liners he would tell you?

SPEAKER_01 5:40

If you can't square, just call me. I mean, just one right after another.

unknown 5:49

Uh him singing, and he uh Joe is just an absolutely amazing, amazing man.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Him and Margaret, his wife, Mrs. Buckovich. Uh, I can't even count how many kids or guys, hockey players, that uh they would take into their family. I mean, lurkers and guys for the played for tech, and I mean they were just extraordinary people. And uh if anybody's seen the Mighty Ducks, he was kind of like the Hans, only with a little bit more flavor to him. He had uh a lot of pizzazz and a lot of one-timers, and uh just an incredible guy. You know, he used to take this, he'd brag about his Russian vitamin, you know, terramice and sigma ice and rocktigall, uh, terramice and sigma ice and verde, rocktigal, city goats, and calcium pangamy. We were able to take that. We'd be just as quick as him.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

So he was an amazing man, amazing man in the community. That is awesome. I really appreciate you sharing those stories. That's great. So would would the other tech players bring their skates to him as well?

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Uh some of the local guys.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Some of the local guys. Um, but uh yeah, even before that, you know, Bobby Del V talk about bringing him coming down and seeing Joe and and Joe's two brothers. Uh yeah, one played for the Red Wings and the other one, the Mike, he was he was a tough guy. Even in, I think in his sixties, uh out in uh Salt Range at one of the bars out there, he'd still be pounding people, you know, guys, college kids.

unknown 7:23

I mean like he was that tough when he was in his sixties. Tony, he played for the Red Wings.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

But uh, and then they had Joe. Joe was kind of like the best of everything, and uh just a great outdoorsman, just a wonderful person.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Okay, and and I'm happy you mentioned that. So I have a buddy um I mentioned to him that you were gonna come on, and he says uh he really enjoyed going to tech games when you played for him, because there was almost guaranteed it'd be a fight.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

I don't know if about tech games, but uh pioneer games. Everybody's got a roll, right? Everybody's got a roll. More of a finesse player personally. But uh, yeah, yeah, Cleve's a heck of a guy.

unknown 8:06

Remember uh Joel, I'll never forget it.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

You know, he he would always talk about, you know, you gotta be fast. Fast and smooth, fast and smooth. Down at the D Stadium, they used to have uh like a like a river skate, just go down, it's like an urban skate. Every, I think it was like Thursdays at like 12 30 or 1 o'clock. And Joe would always say, Hey, well, if you're not skating, come on down. And um to this day, I don't think I've ever seen anybody glide so effortlessly.

unknown 8:36

And at the time he was 72 years old. That is and he was flying around like it was nothing. And it almost like he was out just for a Sunday stroll, right? And his were you know, just man, he was just incredible.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Just incredible. I can't he didn't even have a stick.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

But he was an amazing guy.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

But you uh so but you you had a little bit of that in your game. The you you played uh enforcer role on on some of some of your teams.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, there was quite a few guys like when I came in, like Wayne Garnell, uh, I think he lives in Ironwood now, but he's a local guy, man.

unknown 9:12

He could he could fight. He got Buster Roberts, he could fight for him, Markham. I mean, all those guys.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

I wouldn't want to be pissed on getting pissed off at me and find me in an alley. I know that.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Oh, shoot, that's awesome. Okay, so then once you uh you left tech, what what did you do uh following uh graduation from tech?

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Ah well at tech uh well gonna go back so it was my uh 93, 94. Yeah and uh unless you were graduating senior, you couldn't take you couldn't take any classes past two o'clock.

unknown 9:46

Two o'clock you had to be up to the rates for practice. Okay. And uh unless you're a senior and I knew I wasn't going anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

So I had to figure out how to make a make a living. So I decided I was gonna gotta concentrate on school. Okay. So I graduated uh with a bachelor's degree in geological engineering, and then I came back right away and got a master's degree in civil engineering and ended out in Minnesota, Minnesota, and I played with uh oh man, Mark Morassi's brother Tom, up in Virginia, Minnesota. Uh they put guys together, a team together, and they go down to uh sh Shreveport and uh Texarkana, play the Tex Arcana Border Bandits, uh from the Van Tassel family. So I play with Miles, he was on our team, but then we played the oldest brother, Colby Van Tassel.

unknown 10:35

There's a tough guy right there.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

He's the one that kind of showed me how to fight.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Right. So Okay, so then what did you do? Uh you entered the the workforce as a as an engineer?

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Yeah, I did, yeah. Okay. So uh after after that I entered the workforce, became an engineer uh for a company called Short Elliott Hendrix N S C H based out of Minneapolis, St.

unknown 10:57

Paul. Yeah. And uh moved down there. I was there for about two and a half, three years or so, and uh decided I I gotta get back to the UP and graduate school.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

I mean this is how the how things were good back then, is 1999 I bought uh thirty-two acres of property with an old Finnish farmhouse, a barn out of sauna, and uh for thirty-two thousand five hundred bucks.

unknown 11:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

That is amazing.

unknown 11:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

So I every uh every weekend, every other weekend I'd I'd go down or I'd come back up and I'd I'd work in the house, I'd bring lumber from down there, and I worked lots of hours, and from there I moved to uh Iron Mountain, took a job with Coleman Engineering, and uh they were a great company work for a lot of really good people down there, enjoyed it. And then from there I took a job at Berger Telephone Company in Berriga, Michigan.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Okay. And I I read somewhere that you were a part of uh early uh uh fiber optic network. Yeah. Yeah, it was uh man, you've been doing your homework. I try, I try. No, no. But that was that that was early on. You were you were in the forefront of uh putting out fiber fiber network uh networks.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yeah, yeah. That's an uh uh independent so we were Bayer Telephones a family-owned business for over a hundred and some years, and uh there's another one called High Watch Communications that owned a bunch of small companies here in the UP, a bunch of small telephone companies. And uh way back when when you know long distance it'd be 10 cents a minute, nine cents a minute. Well, when you made a long distance phone call as outside of our area, we'd take it to like the edge of the boundary of our area and where we jump onto ATTs, and ATT would take it to Iron Mountain and from there get out to the rest of the world. Well, anyways, uh we could never beat ATT's price, and neither could Hiawatha. And a guy named Dave McCarthy Mc McCartney, he came along and said, Well, hey, you guys gotta sit down and work this out. And uh so we decided to start building our own fiber optic network in the UP.

unknown 13:10

And now the uh the big the big joke was I'll go anywhere in the UP as long as I don't have to cross the the bridge to go home.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

Right, right. Uh to Lower Michigan.

unknown 13:19

I'm home right now.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

And so yeah, it turned out that we started uh the next gen, what do you call next gen nine one one up here in the upper peninsula and uh so that took off like crazy and the people in northern lower Michigan wanted what the UP had and then it just kind of spread through the entire so we we provide the next gen 911 through every single 83 colonies in Michigan.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

So that's amazing. Okay, so then at some point uh through throughout you made a decision to uh enter the uh the National Guard.

unknown 13:56

I did, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Okay, so what what made you uh make that decision? You were you were working in uh you know engineering, and then all of a sudden you decided to uh join the the Michigan uh National Army Guard. What what made you decide to do that?

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Yeah, I did everything ass backwards.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Hey, that's okay. That's a great story.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Yeah, so when I was about 16 or 17, way before the uh Morgan Freeman uh hit uh movie, it was it, uh the bucket list came out. Okay, I kind of put sat down and I figured, oh, it's okay, well what do I want? Where do I want to be in my life or what do I want out of life? And uh, you know, I wanted a Jeep scrambler, oh man, I wanted a four-wheeler, I wanted a fastboat, I wanted to go to Alaska hunting and fishing, and you know, I figured, oh, I'll get married probably late twenties, you know, just trying to plan my life out. Man, and then life takes a hold and next thing you know is you're you're thirty-one years old. And uh I was up in uh about 125 miles northwest of Iliamna, Alaska, with a good a couple good friends of mine on a uh self-guided caribou hunt where they just kind of drop you off in the middle of nowhere and they fly over you every two or three days, and if they see a blue tarp with some meat on it in uh white bags, they'll stop and pick it up, take it back to the city for you of Iliamna. Well, anyways, uh I was they had some bad weather rolling in, and I was the last one of us three to get picked up. And uh sitting on top of the hill, and there's 125 miles from nearest even gravel road. And uh I was thinking about it, I'm like, man, this is the last thing on my bucket list. Well, what do I do? So I started making a new bucket list and hands hands uh hands on to the uh the the marketing crew for the US Army because they had they had the uh Army of One, Army Strong, you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Oh yeah you know, it's like I'm a pretty tough hockey defenseman, I think, you know.

unknown 15:53

I wonder how I'd I'd fare against them.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

And uh I thought about it and I had a good friend of mine, uh he he he was in the Michigan Army National Guard and then I think it was like oh five, oh six, oh four, oh five, they geared up for Iraq. And I remember their send-off party and I remember their kids crying because their mom and dad had to go and you know, I was like, Well, you know, m maybe I can do it and uh that way, you know, maybe one of those guys won't have to do it.

unknown 16:22

They can stay home.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

I don't have any kids. And of course that was after nine eleven, so you know, it's just kind of yeah, yeah, I think we want to do this. And I was married at the time.

unknown 16:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

And uh my wife and I have, you know, hey, no regrets. And so I told her what I was thinking, and she had no qualms about it, because if that's what you want to do, you know, go do it.

unknown 16:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

And uh we already figured it'd be easier now than when I was like 45 or 50, or so uh and so I joined the Michigan Army National Guard at the right bold age of 32, I think.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

And give you so I was a 32-year-old in boot camp and it was it was fun.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

It was where where did you go to boot camp at?

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Fort Leonardwood, Missouri, Fort Lost in the woods.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Okay. And when you signed up for the National Guard, was that a two-year commitment, a four-year commitment? Like when you signed up, what what did you commit to?

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Uh six years. Oh, six years? Six years was the commitment. And uh the uh recruiter, uh which was a co-worker's husband at the time, you know, he he told me for a while, he goes, if you sign up, you got about 90% chance you're gonna go.

unknown 17:28

You're gonna get deployed.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

And I was like, Well, that's what I'm here for.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

So uh yeah, we signed up anyways.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Okay. And then uh you were deployed. Tell tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Yeah, uh, so I was deployed with the 1431st Engineering Company out of uh Barriga and Calumet, Michigan, with the 107th Engineer uh battalion, and uh see they mashed us with uh unit out of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and one out of California, and then uh one out of Virginia, and then one out of Germany. And our original order said that we were gonna go to Iraq, but they always told us we were going to Afghanistan, and they they figured out the orders were wrong and sure enough, and we deployed to uh eastern Afghanistan, uh over in uh Orgun uh Paktika province uh in two thousand and eight. Uh two thousand yeah, two thousand nine, two thousand nine, January two thousand nine.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

And and what was your role? What were what was your duties?

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Uh so our mission as a as a company, we were road clearance, uh road reconnaissance. So we went ahead of everybody and uh made sure tried to clear the road from all the IEDs that were out there.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

And uh we were kind of like the dog on the leash tried to engage them before they engage the people behind us.

unknown 18:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

And uh my specific role was I was a small arms master gunner or gunner. Uh designated marksman. We uh I ran a 50 cal, uh M two fifty cal, and then I ran also up in the turret we had a uh uh 308. It was uh I'll draw a blank on it here. But uh yeah, basically a full auto 308, uh a 240 M240, and then we also had my rifle up on top as well, and we had what they called Mark 19, which is if you imagine the size of a Red Bull can. If you cut that in half, that's about the size of the round. It shoots like a grenade that anything within 15 meters are gonna be hurting pretty bad, and anything within five meter radius that'll kill 'em.

unknown 19:35

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

So I got to shoot shoot all that stuff. All the good stuff. We got lots of explosives, we got to blow through doors, we got to blow through walls, all kinds of good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

And uh, I want to ask you this. So uh coming from uh you you played a high level of hockey, and there's uh there's training that you're preparing uh on on the ice, you're you're preparing for different uh uh scenarios or whatever, but is it similar when you get into the service? You're you're training, you're you're practicing, you have would you say uh teammates? Can you share the similarities between being in the service and being on a hockey team?

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Yeah. And you know, I I didn't know this until I went in, is there's a huge similarity between being in the military and being uh on a team sport such as hockey. So like uh hockey, I mean you've got your goal scorers, you got your muckers, you got your defensive defensemen, you got offensive defensemen. Uh everybody serves and has a role. Well in the military, it's kind of the same thing. You have uh you have machine gunners, you have designated marksmen, you have medics, you have uh combo guys, you know, radio guys, you've got leaders, and so everybody has a role. And when everybody works together, everything works really well.

unknown 20:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

So and in in going on off of that, I'm sorry, like uh and even going off of that, like later on when you get in the locker room, all the banter that you have in the locker room, a hockey locker room, is the same thing that you have when you're with the guys, with the military guys. You know, it's kinda you know, everybody's picking on each other, everybody's you know, poking fun at each other, but it's all in good nature and stuff, and yeah, it's they're very, very similar.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

And I'm I'm really happy. You sure then I do want to take this time to thank you and uh and all your uh fellow uh men that you served with. Thank you for your services. And I know our listeners would want to wish you that same thank you.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Well, well, thank you very much. I appreciate the sport and and uh support all the m active military and I love our veterans and uh just be I'm just very, very happy to be associated and and part of 'em. You know, we got a lot of really good guys that we were deployed with, guys that were really smart, that worked hard, a lot of grit and uh Uh yeah, I was very, very proud and it was an honor to be with the people that I served with.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

And I I want to ask you this, and you can uh decline to answer. I don't want to cause any uh you know PTSD, but I read that you were uh severely injured on July nineteenth, two thousand nine.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Man, I don't know who's feeding you info, but you got her dialed in. So uh yeah, yeah, so we uh so it was like the we early mornings of July 19th overseas, and uh we had a kind of like a sister RCP or route, Clarence uh platoon, that uh went out three days prior and they c they got shot up quite a bit. Uh their vehicles were really kind of there's holes in the vehicles by what they call a 51 caliber Dishka. Uh it's a Russian-made uh firearm, a big gun. And uh so they stayed up at a place called Sharana for a few days, trying to doing whatever they can to repair the the truck so they could kind of limp them back. And uh one of our uh local uh crews on the RCPs on the on the base said, Well, we'll go out and we'll clear the route for you. And so our job is we're gonna drive out right behind 'em, and then when we hit a certain grid line or grid point, GPS point, uh, it was the first gun truck, and I was gonna come down off the truck and me and one of my very good friends, uh Hotamaki were gonna go up on top of the hill with a big gun and provide overlaunch. And uh so we're s when we left the base, oh man, it was probably like 3 34 in the morning, and uh they gave the mission brief and we knew what was going on, and they said there's probably about eight, they figured eight anti-American fighters, AEF waiting for us. And by the time we got about five kilometers away from the base, it went to twenty, then it went to eighty, then it went to a hundred, and and uh later found out that there was over three hundred Taliban and uh Hakani that were waiting for us to ambush us.

unknown 24:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

So we we we kept right on going, and the uh platoon up ahead of us, California, a good bunch of guys, they uh I was we hit a good point and I was just coming off the the comms, the radio, and I was up on top the truck in the turret, and uh coming off the comms, I lifted my ear muffs and I hear that distinctive kack kack. And uh, you know, I I went to go relay that message down. I'm like, hey, uh Sarge, we you know, uh the the guy riding shotgun and a truck commander, the TC, I was like, hey, we're I have fired an Allison over the the comms net. And we heard, hey, we've got a gunner down, we got a gunner down, we've got two gunners down, we need immediate fire support. So our platoon sergeant platoon leader uh sent us up. So and uh so we got two platoons fighting a bunch of Taliban and Hikani. Uh see I remember it was we were fighting into the sun, you know, so they were very good with you know being smart with what they had and uh which is kind of like uh home rink territory, you know. So we fought for, I don't know, 30, 40 minutes, and then uh I was running low on ammo. Uh called back to the truck behind us, and I'm doing a tactical reload. Our SOP or standard operating procedure was to turn the the back of the turret. We had put higher glass on it, we called it Hillbilly Armor. And we put higher glass and to turn your turret towards where the fire is coming from to help you reload, help cover yourself. And uh I remember I I was shooting a uh Mark 19, which again is that 40 millimeter grenade launcher, and uh I just reached on and and one of our guys said, Hey, you know, what you want? I'm like, give me anything, I'm short on everything. So as I leaned down, I heard that that familiar kekka kick and I could feel it felt like uh like kind of like pine needles getting smacked in the back of the neck with a branch of pine needles.

unknown 26:02

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

And uh I turned around, I looked, and it's like, holy crap, that's like on the inside of the glass, which means somebody is shooting. Uh if you use our if we were traveling in a 12 o'clock direction, somebody was shooting from our left or at like the nine o'clock direction. And so that kind of like, okay, we've got shooters on both sides of the road, this little gravel uh road. And uh so I was just kind of thinking, like, man, that was right where my head was. So I grabbed the the belts and I went to go put them out in the feed tray into this Mark 19, and I seen this one crack and I seen a tracer go zipping across. So I've got this high explosive uh ammunition in my hands, and uh this thing, this this round, this bullet probably passed four or five inches for my hands, and uh I was kind of like immediately jerked back and I was just you know, again, here comes a the slow defenseman thinking, I was like, Man, what would life be with just nubs? You know, yourself and stuff and I was like, Whoa, well, just about that time, if your vehicle if something's wrong with your vehicle that they know that you're reloading, the amount of small arms fire on that vehicle would intensify.

unknown 27:16

It's like they pick you out, it's like blood in the water or something. The rolls are picking off the truck.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

I said, Okay, a couple deep breaths, one, two, three, and uh, put the ammunition in uh in our bucket and fed it up through the feed throat, cocked it twice, and uh my right hand was hand was on the turrets, kind of like a joystick, and my left hand had butterfly triggers on the Mark 19, and I was just turning back to the right, and uh that's when it hit, and we weren't sure what it is, but I'll be darned, it's just like the movies, you know, like when everything kind of slows really slow. It it just looks like that.

unknown 27:57

And that was one of the first things that kind of like, man, whoa, this is weird.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Yeah, and our uh truck commander, you know, you could hear him say, Whoa, bro, oh PG, then everything kind of went back to like the normal. And uh as soon as, you know, I got everything into the gun, I got the gun loaded, the Mark 19, and I turn it, I was like, okay, I know where this guy is. There's a s one tree in this little swale, and what they would do is they'd dig a small hole right behind that tree, and that would become their fighting position. I'm like, I know where that guy is. So it's like, alright, you shot, you missed, my turn. So I'm turning into it, and that's like I said, that's when it hit. It's if you took the palm of your hand and struck yourself right in the forehead, that's kind of like the what what I seen. It was kind of like uh I noticed it was like a halfway decent hockey hit. I remember uh you know, I could still breathe, and I was amazed that whatever happened, it only took half the wind out of me.

unknown 28:59

And it's like skating across center ice with your head down, you know.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

I think I've been hit harder than an RPG.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

But uh so what happened is this RPG uh came in and it has a penetrating explosive, so it burnt through the hit the outside of the turret, burnt through the the outside or the turret, came in and exploded, hit me right square in the front chest plate, threw me back into the into the back of the turret. And uh so I had a smoke grenade. It was uh we had if we were in the gunner's turret, we had to have a smoke grenade in case somebody got caught out, you could throw the smoke and provide some concealment. And uh so it threw me back. Well, anyways, that's uh here I am, I got half half my breath, and I go off a good one. And then I opened my eyes and I couldn't see it. Felt like I had uh like grid or sandpaper underneath my eyelids. And it's like, okay, just relax. And you just kind of flash back on in my life when I was eight years old. My younger brothers were they're twins, they're five years old. One of them got run over by a boat in the boat trailer. And I remember seeing him laying there on the ground, and uh he was bleeding out of his nose and his eyes and his ears. And when he was in the hospital before he came home, he was he was blind, he couldn't see anything. But my mom, for two weeks straight, she'd come home and she had these really nice blindfolds, and the the other three of his kids, my sister and my other brother and I, we'd have to wear these for like an hour and a half to two hours a night to get some kind of sense, hey, this is what your brother's going through. So when he gets home, you know, be a little have a little compassion for him, you know. And uh fast forward, here I am in the middle of a firefight, and uh like, okay, just relax. It's just like wearing a blindfold, just relax, and I position the gun as far to the 12 o'clock as I could, and I'm hitting the depressing the triggers and nothing's firing, and I grabbed my 240 Bravo that's uh 308, uh full automatic 308, and it's not firing, and I'm uh it was like, okay, I'm I'm pretty much ineffective up here, and uh so I'm coming down and I I could tell something was wrong with my right arm because uh I couldn't move it, and so I kind of had it laying across the top of my magazines on the front part of my IBA or my vest. And uh so again, here comes the the slow defensement part of me. We had a a pack that attached to our vests, it's called an IFAC or an inv individual first aid kit.

unknown 31:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

And these things, when you open them up, you know, there's so much stuff in there and they pop out and you got stuff everywhere, all the right stuff. But it's just a pain in the butt to put it back in. I just all I wanted was a turnip kit, a cat tourniquet. And I was like, oh, there's one one on the radio mount. So I pulled it off the radio mount and I was sliding it over my right my right wrist, and I found a bone, and I slid a bone stick out, and I slid it up, I found it, I found it. I'm like, okay, a couple broken places in my arm. My arms broke a couple places, and I was shooting with these these fingerless gloves, and I remember everything slowed down. I was like, alright, you know, if I scoot this cat tourni tourniquet over my elbow, and I find out I don't have an elbow there, and it's just uh just like a one-inch flap of skin, hamburger hill Vietnam movie type thing that everybody's seen.

unknown 32:24

I think I'm gonna flip bow.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

And sure enough, I know I wasn't sure I couldn't see what was going on, but uh sliding it up over, and I you know, I could stick my fingers right there in the joint and I could feel bowling. I'm like, okay, I'm good. So two inch two inches above and start cranking it down, and uh, you know, then we had one of our guys, good friend Adam, he uh he's like, Man, there's a fire, put the fire out, and and we had uh truck TC, our truck commander, he was bleeding from the shoulders. Our driver took a piece of shrapnel that came down and hit him in the right knee, and and uh here I am, and that smoke grenade that got hit, by the way, that was inside that dropped down inside the vehicle. So everything is green, smells like sulfur. Yeah, it was it was a pretty chaotic time, but uh yeah, so that's kind of what happened to me. But RPG came in through the uh through the gunner's turret, hit me and hit me right square in the chest plate and spalding and metal took off my elbow. Uh like blast from the concussion, broke my number ten rib, my bladder exploded inside me. And this again, here's the hockey players like, man, uh please tell me that I didn't piss myself because my bladder exploded. You know, I knew the guys would be giving me a hard drive. I get it, you it's just stuff you think about, you know.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

Key, so how how did how did you get out of the situation? Did they like how what what happened then? Like how'd you get out of there?

SPEAKER_01 33:50

Well, they came they well through we we practice everything. We are a platoon sergeant, uh Drew Battles for and I mean we we practice and practice just like hockey.

unknown 34:00

Yeah, you just drill it in, drill it in, drill it in be till it becomes muscle memory.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

So when it when we got hit, we had uh we kept fighting through the through the kill zone and we had a truck pull up on the contact side, kinda block us in, and another truck pull up be behind them, and then uh the medic was able to get in our vehicle and got Medavack out and yeah. So live to tell the tale. I actually walked out of the vehicle, uh, started walking towards the chopper and they're like, Whoo, you gotta whoa my gosh, you gotta lay down. It's kinda like I couldn't see, I had bandages over my eyes at that point. I'm like, What? Um, nothing, you just gotta lay down. So I was like, dude, that's not funny, guys. Uh yeah, it just everything that we trained for, hard, hard, hard all the time. Uh that's the reason everything went so smooth, you know.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

And so they where did they medevacue to? W were you still in Pakistan for your uh medical care?

SPEAKER_01 34:59

So Oregon E is uh just west of the Pakistan border. And uh and we were just a little bit west of of our base in Orgun. And uh it was like man, they had us back on base within I think like ten minutes or something.

unknown 35:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

And uh yeah, this so they they stabilized me in a conics called the first surgical team, the FST, on uh Organic E. And uh then from there I flew to Bogram, uh, and then I coated out, I guess, a couple times in Bogram. They didn't know about the internal injuries, they just knew about my eyes and my arm. And uh then uh when my blood pressure and my vitals just crashed, that's when they found out I had internal bleeding and a bladder and uh grade one lacerated liver, and so that's uh so they went in, they started fixing me up in there. From there I went to Longstool, Germany, and then Longstool to uh Andrew flew into Andrews Air Force Base and uh Walter Breed Army Medical Center.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Okay, and was that was was that the end of your uh your military career?

unknown 36:09

Nope.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

No, so they it went through. I mean I did you have the option? Like, could you have said, Okay, I'm that's it, I'm done.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Yeah, it was it was limited, you know. Uh I it is as strange as it sounds, I felt awful. I felt awful because I left all my brothers and sisters in that horrible place.

unknown 36:33

Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

In in the middle of, you know, it's kind of you know, to relate it to hockey, okay? So it's kind of like if uh if your team's going on the road to play one of the toughest, toughest teams and they're just dirty, and you're you know it's gonna be a very, very physical game, and it you're walking into their arena, you know, and it's like, man, my my guys are over there, you know. And uh, you know, it's like I should be there. I feel like I kind of copped out of everything. And uh but so anyways, fast forward, uh see that happened on July 19th. Uh made it I didn't get out of Walter Reed till I want to say like November because I remember I just made it back in time for uh hunting season. And uh so from Walter Reed they sent me to a place called Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois for this uh CBWTU, uh this community-based warrior transition unit. And it's a crew over there that they set up all your doctor's appointments and your rehab and everything back where you live so that uh you're not gonna re-injure yourself and then you can go back and recoup. And they said, Well, we're gonna we're gonna med board you out, we're gonna discharge you from the military. And I was like, Well, I still got a lot to give, you know, I'm I'm still good. And at that time, my right arm, I had a surgery about every other day, and my right arm, my elbow consisted with they broke it down for me. They said, uh, it was pretty much we took the five biggest bone fragments and we took some plates and we plated it together so it looked somewhat like an elbow, and then we screwed it all back into your arm. And I had, if you take your take your right arm, put it straight out, and then you try to bend at the elbow, I had probably two to three inches. I couldn't even feed myself with one of those great big wooden Amish spoons. And uh I remember before I got a Walter Reed, they they had said, Well, you before you leave, you know, it's just mandatory, you gotta make make three three goals for yourself. I was like, Okay. And uh I was like, Well one, I wanna eat with my right hand. Two, I wanna be able to hunt and fish and uh with my right arm, I wanna shoot right handed. I can't shoot rifle left or right handed, but wing shooting, man, that's gonna be tough, you know, switching over. And then uh the first thing is I want to play hockey. And they're like, Well, you gotta they're your goals, but you gotta keep them within reach. You're not gonna you're not gonna play hockey. I'm like, okay. And uh so here I am I get out, and this is this is pretty you know, talk about you know, things working in an unbelievable way, and people being you're meeting people and you just the way life works, you know. So growing up, I played hockey with a girl named Colleen Malik. She was one of two girls in our association. She had red hair, come from an extraordinary family, and uh we were great friends off the ice. But when we were on the ice, her and I battled, and she was she was tough. She still is tough. And uh so I we you know, we're mites or something, you'd fall down, and she used to have these red pigtails. And I'd reach over, I'd I kinda not hard, but I'd kind of tug her on her pig pigtails just to tease her, and then when you get in front of that or something like that, she'd give me a nice good cut check. Let me know that she was there. So where this comes into is so uh it was discharged from Walter Reed. I went to uh the war CBWTU in Rock Island and I was there for about a week, week and a half, and they're setting up trying to set up all the all the medical stuff. And so the last thing I gotta do is I go over there and they're like, okay, well, here's a list of orthopedic surgeons in the Houghton Hancock area. And there's like six, five or six. And he goes, You gotta pick one of these. And you know, it's coming from a small community, you know, it's like I duck hunted and goose hunted with a couple of them, and my wife's a nurse, so she worked with with a few of them, and everybody kind of was everybody, and I knew that none of them worked on elbows, you know, there's knees, there's this guy does hips, she does shoulders, uh, but nobody did elbows. And so I kind of looked at him and I pushed the piece of paper back across to this captain, this officer, and and uh he I said, Well sir, I don't feel comfortable picking one of these on the list. None of them do elbows. And his re he's like, Okay, let me re he says, You have to pick one of these and you can't go back to Walter Eat. So I looked at it and I was like, sir, I don't feel comfortable. I figured, what are they gonna do? Kick me out. And uh he sent me over to this couch on the other side of the room, and I sat there for si literally seven and a half hours reading magazines, I you know, at least looking at the pictures. And uh he called me over at the end of his work day and he pushed the list over and he says, You gotta pick one. So you're you're right, you know, I called all of them on a thing, none of them do elbows, but if they can do a knee, they can do an elbow. But if you think about the the movement of the joint, you know, you got you can rotate your wrist back and forth, plus you can bend it. Well, the knees just bend, and they take more weight, but they're also bigger. And I said, Sir, I don't feel comfortable. And I pushed it back, he goes, Well, we're at an impasse. He goes, Here's what we're gonna do. You have five minutes to find an orthopedic surgeon that specializes in elbows, and you can't go back to Walt's Reed. And before I tell you what happened, I'm gonna back up probably about a month. When I was at Waltz Reed, and I finally got to the main hospital and they put us in like a halfway house, we had access to a computer. And on on Facebook, believe it or not, you know, my brother had posted a picture saying that, you know, hey, the rumors are false. He's still, he's got both eyes, he's just can't see right now. I was blind for 13, 14 days. Um, but he's still living, he's got all his limbs, uh, and posted a picture. Well, lo and behold, uh this girl, Colleen, uh, she's she put a post on her. I didn't even know you were in the military. Thank you for your service. Uh nice X fix, which was a contraption that held my arm in place, and she goes, uh PM me on my number if you need anything. Yeah, I'll give me a call. I'm an orthopedic surgeon. You ready for this? Specializing in elbows.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

That is that is amazing. That's an awesome story.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

Oh, it's incredible. So fast forward, and then here I am sitting in front of this captain, and he's getting a little snarky, and he's like, Alright, well, you got five minutes. And I was like, Sir, you mind if I use my my cell phone? And he goes, Yeah, sure. I don't know if he thought I was gonna call, you know, like yellow pages or what, but so I called uh my friend Colleen and uh like, Hey, Colleen, because Frenchie, and she answered on like the second ring. So how often do you call like a somebody in the medical profession?

SPEAKER_02 43:33

And they answered just like that.

SPEAKER_01 43:35

And so she's I'm like, Hey, this I said, Hey, I've got a doctor. Were you serious about being my orthopedic surgeon? She goes, Yeah, absolutely. I'm like, Here, talk to this guy. And I gave that phone to the captain, and so he kind of looked at me and he had a lot of distrust. I think he thought I was gonna pull one over. He's like, Really? You're an orthopedic surgeon? Oh, okay, well, what's your medical examiner number? And so he see him typing it in and his mouth just dropped in like all the color drained out of his face. And he looked at the screen and goes, Alright, I'll release him in your care. And sure enough, that's that's what got me home. And she became my orthopedic surgeon. Uh came back up to Houghton Hancock. I went through uh uh rehab up here for my arm and at the time again I could only bend it like two, three inches.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

Right.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

And uh it was kind of cool, you know, like uh you know when I was doing it two of the pins popped out of, you know, I could see them kind of protruding from underneath the skin and they pop out and I realized it's like cool I can keep moving it a little bit. I can push them back in. Well uh my wife she called uh colleague she's like hey he's just out of control with this pin stuff and so I went down there and she uh she's awesome. I mean this orthopedic surgery she she operates listening to Metallica. I mean how cool is that oh that's great. Yeah so uh so anyway she hooked me up she got me into the May clinic and uh they did the the final surgery in the May clinic and uh they were gonna put a cadaver elbow in there and when they got in there there was a lot more infection than they thought and they so they put a mechanical elbow in the chromium cobalt. And if you look at it like on the x ray it looks exactly like a universal joint in your drive shaft on your vehicle.

unknown 45:31

Dead serious I'm and listen to these doctors talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 45:36

You know it's like you're like it's like they're just talking about we're pulling out your uh yeah we're gonna pull out the alternator and then you know you take the belt off then you you know this and that and put the alternator back in and you loosen the bolt and then tighten the the belt and then tighten it up and you're good to go. You know and it's okay you you just do you. I'll just lay there.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

Isn't isn't that incredible?

SPEAKER_01 45:59

They I had because of uh Colleen Lenahan Dr. Lenahan I had literally is ranked the number one elbow surgeon in the world working on me. All because of her she she sent uh uh my case over to him and even gave her like a presentation and a letter and and uh I didn't know this at the time but that's how you gotta be accepted to go to the Mayo Clinic and here we are they put a new elbow in me and I couldn't believe I could move it and uh the doctor was also he was a hockey player uh is from Toronto, Ontario and you know before we leave and you know I was like hey ho how long before I can play hockey Uh yeah and uh a little while later he's like hey you got any questions I'm like yeah how long before I play hockey and he's like you're not playing hockey anymore you're done and it's like ooh that hurts and I was like well it is what it is and I came back and you know everybody the hockey is such ingr so ingrained into this community and you know all your friends play hockey and even go and watch them playing hockey and just part of you who you are it's in your fabric and so uh I don't know I started getting better and I started playing hockey again a little bit here and there.

unknown 47:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

Are you still are you still skating now?

SPEAKER_01 47:14

I am are you depending if uh if uh if if my doctor from uh Ontario or NASA know I'm not skating but in but uh yeah I am I am playing hockey.

SPEAKER_00 47:26

And uh and how do how does the elbow feel today?

SPEAKER_01 47:30

Feels good feels good. In fact after the uh the uh surgeon uh Dr. Odrisco at the mail clinic put the new elbow in I went back to Michigan Army National Guard. You know I never failed a PT test. I went to a couple uh really cool marksmanship schools down in Arkansas and they couldn't they didn't even know I had an artificial elbow at all until uh one day they see me off to put the blouse on my my shirt and uh they're like what is that scar from motorcycle? I'm like no I got hit with an RPG and they looked it up and sure enough I guess you know they're like holy crap and just a great story you know and so it's on all the PT tests instead of for a push up to count you have your elbows have to break a 90 degree plane. Well that was no problem but as my right arm was a little bit weak so what I do is I took my left arm put it right underneath my chest and put my right arm out to the side as long as I broke that 90 degree plane the push up counted so and so I went oh man we went to Latvia four times I believe then we went to uh did a NATO mission in Germany Hohenfeld Germany with uh NATO and this one uh did a deployment for when Ironwood got flooded, went down there and threw big trunks for them to help get people out of the flood waters and take food and water into the people and Yeah. And finally got medically discharged in two thousand eighteen when when they came around they were looking at my uh everyone's annual to see hey alright we're gearing up to kind of like in the shoot to be deployed and they looked at me like what are you doing here? I'm like, dude I'm just doing my work and they're like yeah you're not going. You got what you gotta get out. And that was right at the same time when they were kind of downsizing the forest so I went out. But it was good. It was good 'cause at the time, you know my kids were I got two younger boys, Andrew and Michael, and uh at that that point they when they see me ge get geared up and they grab my bags and stuff, they started acting up.

unknown 49:37

They they kind of knew I was leaving so it was it was time.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

I could feel it was fine. So we medically got medically discharged in 2018.

SPEAKER_00 49:47

I want to ask you about your your help with the Michigan flood was that what they called the uh was it the Mother's Day or the Father's Day flood? Uh no that was before that there was one in Ironwood different different one. Yeah different one okay so uh so how old are your boys now today? Uh uh my oldest just turned 15 and my youngest uh he turned 15 last Wednesday my youngest one turned 13 okay last month are they playing hockey? Oh yeah they're addicted to it they got the bug I I want to ask you this earlier you had mentioned when you had bought your uh your property up there you had mentioned that it's got a uh I like to call it a sauna and and the youpers uh like to correct me I know you pronounced it the the way they do it so uh are you a fan of uh taking saunas up there?

SPEAKER_01 50:37

Oh I love sauna sauna Okay here monkey school but you're good to go. Okay how about uh how about pasty you eat past seriously if like for some reason I was on death row and they said okay hey here's what do you want for your last meal you're gonna have to come up to the UP and get some good pasta because that's that's what I'm holding up to oh I love it.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

And I do want to recognize this it says um and again thank you for your services but you were um recognized this says earning excellence and competition badge governor 20 you've got some uh rewards for uh markmanship training coordinator all sorts of uh good stuff that you were recognized by the military with yeah yeah so it's I don't know what I what I really enjoy about it is I enjoyed my time training.

SPEAKER_01 51:36

I love the training and I love the guys I was with the guys and girls I was with you know just fabulous people.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 51:43

So no the words they just came they just came.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

So are you uh are you retired now or are you currently working? What are you doing now?

SPEAKER_01 51:52

Uh I'm back at work at uh we talked about uh that that other company that we built Peninsula Fiber Network and uh so they've it's just taken off like crazy and we got fiber all the way from Minnesota all the way down to we're putting it into Chicago two runs underneath the lake in Chicago we've got it across in the Sioux Ontario like I said we got fiber all the way across the state and so I've been working with them.

SPEAKER_00 52:18

Okay so how do you uh how do you put uh fiber in underwater?

SPEAKER_01 52:24

Well you get a a couple sections of garden hose and you uh and you you kind of you know divers they just have they just lay it on the bottom they have big bars they kind of push along and uh it's super heavy armored cable it's probably about four inches or so yeah so heavily armored and there's a lot of stuff that goes into it which uh we our engineer our project manager on that job is just doing a bang up job he does uh all the stuff that goes into it like uh all these uh studies and he has found I think one undocumented airplane and two shipwrecks through this project.

SPEAKER_02 53:05

Really?

unknown 53:06

So yeah it's just fascinating how they do this.

SPEAKER_01 53:09

And then even working with the city of Chicago you know coming from a small area you know Hoot and Hancock and and then working with a sort a big place like Chicago all the stuff that goes into it all the intricacies and it's a fabulous project. So that's I'm doing that. Uh I teach hunter safety uh I coach a couple hockey teams play hockey hunt and fish I went to uh a guide school out in Maine for a a good organization called Wounded Warrior and Actions Foundation they're based out of Florida but they uh they take Purple Heart veterans hunting and fishing throughout the United States free of charge.

SPEAKER_00 53:48

Just a bit of so they sent me the exercise I want you to talk I want you to talk about your foundation.

SPEAKER_01 53:55

You have a foundation and it says uh you helped develop a gun site for blind and visually impaired I did patent all the time patenting your design and creating a foundation tell me about your foundation this is amazing so it's called the MA French foundation and my dad's uh first and middle name was Michael Andrew uh my o my youngest son's name is Michael my oldest son's name is Andrew and uh so I created this foundation to market uh a a gun site like you said for blind people so I told you that when my brother Dan had his injury and became blind uh when he was in his twenties he uh he was getting married and we're gonna throw him a a really good bachelor party and he's like well actually I'd rather go hunting instead but uh I was like he he literally he can't see anything he's 100% blind and uh so my dad's like well John you figure you're the engineer I sent you to school you figure it out and I'll he had a tool and die uh degree from Ferris and worked at steering gear and had a 1200 acre farm down state. He said you design it, I'll build it. And we tried everything like lasers and at the time they had the they still they had computers that hooked up the scopes but those were like twenty thousand dollars and uh there's like devices that you put your iPhone on top of a scope and you can see but anybody that deer hunts where it's cold your phone you know gets taxed the battery gets taxed pretty good. And so we needed more of a mechanical, a physical way to do this. And uh so I was watching the Detroit Tigers baseball game and I used to be a catcher growing up and I was watching it and I I couldn't believe that the umpire's face was literally right on the catcher's shoulder and I'm like that's it and uh so I made a couple and my brother Dan tried it out. He was my guinea pig and he shot a cow up at I think the first one was like a hundred and twenty six yards or something. He shot a cow up. Okay and then that led into hey let's go do this let's go do this and so we been running all around the nation shooting cool stuff and uh through that wounded warrior in action foundation I found myself in Eagle River Wisconsin doing a uh walleye trip and I had a guy canceled and they're like hey how far are you from Eagle River, Wisconsin? Like it's an hour and twenty minutes, hour and thirty minutes. Went down lo and behold here's a guy I surfed with that when he left Walter Reed he didn't have any eyesight but he got his dominant eye back and he uh it was his I couldn't believe I I hadn't seen him in since like five years since him and I left Walter Eat. And uh I was talking to him and he's like what what his passion was is he really wanted to take a blind person hunting and he was like I just gotta figure out how to do it. And I remember uh his wife he didn't drink that much but we were sitting there drinking other highlights in his garage and I started laughing and he I didn't mean to offend him but uh Spurgeon said, you know, I was like what's so funny and I pulled out my cell phone I showed him all the pictures of my brother and I with this device and uh he's like that'd be great. He used it. He he took a guy out and and I was starting to put two to two together and I was like man you know all these veterans that are visually impaired they they have they used to hunt, they used to shoot a lot. Now they don't that now they can't and uh well it worked for my brother Dan it worked for uh my buddy down here for his buddy and I was like well I gotta get this out there but I didn't want any big corporation to steal it. So I wrote a patent and uh I got a word on a patent uh for it and it's called the French VIS uh visually impaired sighting system it's kind of like a knockoff again here here comes the childish defenseman hockey you know my last name is French so you go to borrow oh did you invent the French Kiss make you go and stuff or the French toast or French fries?

SPEAKER_00 58:03

So now I can actually say yes I did invent the French this you know so okay so and how how do people find your foundation do you have a website or social media I'll put it in our show notes but uh how do people find this that want to uh uh support you uh actually if you look up uh French visually impaired citing system or French VIS on Facebook that'll point you to it I used to have a uh webpage uh MA French Foundation uh so if you google that that should pop up but uh the easiest way to get a hold of me is just uh the MA or French VIS on on Facebook or just look me up John French on Facebook okay I'll I'll make sure to post that and I do want to ask you this um this is a pretty neat uh quote I see and so but uh you had a uh a professor at at Michigan Tech Henry Santaford okay and and he said that 80% of today's engineering is people management and 20% is actual engineering 100% yep tell me about that because that is very very true so I had him when I was going for my grad school he taught uh hydromechanics A talk and taught fluids and uh so he he was one of those teachers that stick out that the work you were doing he took all the stuff that you learned in a book and actually made it applicable to the real world and he had a consulting business on the side so he you know like cases and work he's done a couple of years ago he would bring the old cases in present us with the information and we break up in groups and he be he was a great professor him and Chris Madla uh oh man uh John Sandel you know I mean the people that really put two together and and helped us realize that hey this is this is where it applies.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:08

This is why you're learning this. And uh so he was on my graduate committee and stuff but that was one of his his things that he said was that uh yeah eighty percent of the engineering these days is is people management and about twenty percent engineering because everything's all scripted out everything is you've got regulations and and design criteria how you can make a road how you can how to size a culvert how to do a bridge you know an airport everything has regulations for good reason and it all comes down to working figuring out how to work with all the various people and he was he's been spot on ever since. Him and uh we had a guy named Mark Alburn he he taught uh engineering econ and uh remember him in class said all right everybody pull out your wallets pull out your purses open up how much cash you got in you and uh he's like yeah I said when you graduate you get a job you'll have that much cash in your wallet you'll just have better toys so you remember weird stuff like that. Talk about this uh veterans hockey uh tournament you have yeah so we what we did is uh what we have uh it's called the Michigan Upper Peninsula Veterans Hockey Club and it's formed from veterans from across the entire Upper Peninsula and that's part of uh what they call warrior hockey in USA hockey and so you have to be a a minimum ten percent disabled to play in like the big tournaments and everything like that and uh but it all got started when uh I got back his about 2019 or so I got a call from uh a friend that I went to school with that played high school hockey and they said uh he's like hey Frenchie you got any veterans up there that play hockey and I was kind of like yeah we got a few he goes well you got enough to put together a team I was like oh yeah yeah we can we can we can put something together so we devised this home at home series uh most goals wins and uh he's like okay well we're gonna kick your butt so I was like uh game on so we talked about earlier about you know uh UP hockey versus lower potential hockey better but uh I mean hockey's good everywhere but we went down and it it got to be a pretty pretty big thing and so we gathered guys from across I mean Sault Ste Marie to Calumet Mohawk Houghton Hancock Lance uh we got one bully that's from Iron Mountain and just all over just a great representation of the UP and we went and we we put a pretty good salakin on the dog in Saga and then but then they gotta come all the way up here and play us up here. And so we pulled out the all the stops and City Holton has been unbelievable to work with they uh provided us ice at the D Stadium a couple uh they let us practice there and we just you know we got together a couple times and just like a regular ice rental went out and scrimmaged and and when they came up we had the Michigan Tech cut band was there's a line there was a line all the way out to the door from the D Stadium to Lakeshore Drive. I remember um so we had a bunch of displays from the VA to uh veterans service organization to you name it if if you're a veteran and they get in for free we had veterans uh police fire EMS uh active duty and kids under 12 are free and you come in we had a whole bunch of silent auctions uh Joel Isaacson Michigan Tech hockey hockey hooked us up big time with jerseys and Joel had a night or 2016 sled hockey gold olympic uh Olympic gold sled hockey jersey signed by the guys and so we raised money for this uh DJ Jacob Eddie home for vets in market and they needed some money and we raised over five thousand dollars for them and we raised some money for a local guy uh another veteran that his son had cancer and they were traveling back and forth uh uh Ann Arbor and uh we've so it started off and we we we just had a great time and we sitting there after the game we had matching jerseys we had one set of jerseys, light jerseys, one set of socks and uh sitting there afterwards like man this is great. Well and behold like a year you know six eight months later we get a call from USA hockey saying hey we're one team short in this warrior division down in Detroit in the national championships. Can you come down? And uh like yeah sure and so a bunch of us you know drove down to Troy and uh here we are we're we're pulling up and we're wearing jeans, work boots, hunt hunting boots, uh flannels, ball caps, everyone's got different bags and we see these buses come in and and these vans with trailers with all wrapped with their logos and stuff. We didn't really know much about this uh Warriors division and uh we all these guys are like matching like warm-up outfits and we're like what the heck did we get ourselves into we walk inside and we're watching a little bit of hockey and these guys are coming out on the ice they've got socks, gloves, pants, helmets you know and we're like I mean they look professional. And we're like oh my God, we're gonna look like a bunch of bums. And uh I remember we're in a locker room and we're like, okay, I've got an extra black helmet. Who needs to you know just so we can all live together. And we had different colored pants, different colored gloves, a couple different colored helmets, but we were like well just go have fun. And the people that we met, like the other veterans and stuff, they were just incredible. And it's just a big networking well we ended up winning it. Winning the uh our the national championship in our division.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:58

Really?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

That's amazing. We came back, you know, and we couldn't believe it. And where we practice a couple more times and we're sitting in the locker room and we're like, Man, that'd be great if uh we should do this. I really want to do this, like every year. We should just have a team. And like I said, you know, all the bantering and all the extracurricular stuff that you do in the military is the same stuff that happens in the locker room. Everyone's picking on one guy for something and this guy for another thing. And uh so it fills that camaraderie role.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:30

And then it's like, well, if we're gonna do this, we're gonna continue to find a way to raise money for whatever cause it is. So you know, there's that service coming back. And uh so we got camaraderie, we got service, we've got guys that were really bad alcoholics that would get gout. And it was either drink and get gulp and not be able to play, or cut back on the drinking and be able to play hockey, and they chose hockey.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:57

Then uh we've had lives, we had uh girlfriends, like man, I can't believe the change I've seen in 'em in the last couple months.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:06

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:06

So we started, yeah, this Michigan UP Veterans Hockey Club, and it we found out that the NHL, they have their NHL Players Association, and what we were told is how these guys look so good and get all their equipment. So everyone's sponsored by an NHL program because the NHL Players Association mandates that each team, uh, NHL teams sponsor two local teams, two community teams. Okay. And most of them are veteran hockey teams. It's like veterans hockey or warrior hockey, uh, sled hockey or blind hockey. And uh usually it's sled hockey and and veterans hockey are more prevalent, so that's what they go with. So you have like the Pittsburgh uh Penguin Warriors, you've got the uh Capitol Beltway Warriors, you've got the Philadelphia Flyer Warriors, you've got Chicago Black. I mean, like every team has them. And then here you have a bunch of guys from the UP. And we're sponsored by like uh oh man, Peninsula Fiber Network. Uh we're sponsored by Barriga Telephone and uh this trucking company and uh the city of Houghton and uh so we're sitting in a locker room and it's like yeah, okay, if well if we're gonna do this, we gotta kinda clean up our act a little bit. When we went to Detroit, we had to get a waiver because we only had one jersey and we had to go back to all the guys that played against the the one and done or two game series with Saginaw.

unknown 1:08:32

We had to go back and collect the jerseys, like, hey, can we get that jersey back? We'll get it back to you, we're done. Right. And we had to get a waiver to get into the Detroit Nationals.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:41

And uh so now I was like, well, okay. So we put it out there and we had so we had jerseys and stuff. We for 47, 43 players, I think it was. So we had we got bags, we got socks, we got tent shelves, we got stickers for the helmet, hoving away jerseys, hoving away socks, and uh it was all sponsored by people through the upper peninsula, Colvin Engineering, um whoever went electric over in the Sioux, you know, it just uh Rapid River Knives. You know, all these all these companies really stepped up and they chipped in, I think it was like three hundred dollars you could sponsor a hockey player. And they get their name on the back of the jersey and big banner with their logos on it that we display every place we go. But uh so we're sitting there one night in the locker room having a couple road sodas, and we're it's like, Well, we should we gotta do something so we look better going in, you know, so we look more professional. And somebody said, Well, I don't wanna have the normal C CM and Bower gear and stuff, great stuff, but everybody else has I want to do something different. Then uh one of our guys said, It'd be cool if we did something that would like, I don't know, something that defines us, maybe like Stormy Croamer. You know, that'd be cool if everybody had like Stormy Croamer hockey jackets, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:02

You know, custom hockey jacket.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:04

And I'll be darned so we I get get home late and I wasn't sleeping much at that time, and and uh so I sent Stormy Cromer uh email, and I'll be darned if they wrote back at like seven, eight in the morning the following day saying, We love it. Come on down. And so we are the only team ever that's been that has custom made Stormy Kromer jackets, Mackinac cruiser jackets in black wool.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:30

They are sawing them, we got Stormy Kromer hats.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:33

I love me now we're from the UP.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:36

I love it. That is amazing. And thank you for shouting out those companies, and I'll try to look them up to make sure I post them in the notes too. But that that is awesome. So I want to ask you about these games. When you're playing uh the the other Warriors, are these friendlies? Or uh you know, I've watched the uh the New York Police Department play the fire department, and those games are like old brawl. Yeah, is that what your warrior games are like?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:04

Hey, you know, like Philly, Philly is always cheap. Um, yeah, it it gets pretty heated. But uh so we started what we did is so Minnesota, the Minnesota Warriors, uh uh they're obviously the Wilds team. Yeah, and uh they've got over, oh man, 370 to 400 players, uh veteran hockey players. And they've got a team in the Minnesota Warriors have a team in Duluth, Mankato, St. Cloud, the Twin Cities, and Rochester. And so what we do is we've been having them coming up every year. And uh we rate it we play 'em. We bring them in uh the keyboard waters, they have a bunch of condos and now a a uh campground on the water on the canal, and they put them up the park, right on the water. And uh all the businesses will throw a hundred bucks in towards the game to help raise money, and we always raise money for something, for somebody else. So we we raised, oh I don't know, it's like seven thousand dollars for the equipment loan of the QA, and then we donate like$750 to the local junior hockey association and Houghton Hancock, then another$750 to Calumet,$750 to QA Bay. We just try to help the community out. But in turn, we go out and uh they come in on Friday and a bunch of us take stop, get some ambassador pizza, uh, some QA brewing. They've been incredible sponsors. But uh they always go and eat some beverages and we take Kiwanow Brewing Company's beer out there and get Amber pizza, and we sit on a deck and we meet them, we we have fun and just hang out with them, and then we pick them up the next day. We took 'em to uh we take them to the Sumi Cafe in the morning, so you got thirty some hockey players in the Sumi.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:49

Yeah. Love it. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:52

Yeah, and then we took 'em, man, we took them to Luigi's at the Speakeasy with uh the hidden hidden wall, and you go downstairs in the hidden compartment for prohibition. Take them there. We took them to Shooties. Uh this past year we took them to the uh Quincy Mine house, went on a tour of the Quincy Minecause they kept seeing what is that thing up there.

unknown 1:13:11

Yep, yep. And uh it's cool, it's great.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:13

You can show off the community, and the community is so warm and inviting to them. We got quite a few of them come up now on for vacation with their families. Michigan Tech, uh every year they they come through and they they uh throw a couple sticks or a couple jerseys and they always give us a really good tour of the hockey facilities up there and so and then so the following year after Detroit we went we drove out to Colorado, we won it in Colorado.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:42

So so you're undefeated in the in the Warriors division.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:46

In the Warriors no, no. We can't say that.

unknown 1:13:50

But uh yeah, they didn't want to tease us.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:53

But we we did get beat uh by a team like we went to Iron Mountain, we played uh Timmy Jaska from the Pioneers, a good friend. They were trying to raise money for new nets and uh some uh upgrades around the reach, so we went down and we played their uh adult old timers kinda. We played their all-star team down there and raised money and they got to keep all the money and we went to uh Ironwood and Ironwood, we took a slack from Ironwood, but I forget we it's like eight to five or something, but they had a lot of college guys that came back they're a lot faster. But we once we figured out like, okay, we gotta move the property a lot quicker than we are. Uh we came back but not quite enough. So Okay, everybody. But yeah, every year we we play a couple games, a couple two or three fundraiser games a year, uh very different places to raise money for hockey associations, for any kind of good good foundation, people that are doing good that just need a little financial boost. We'll do whatever we can.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:54

That's awesome. And we can uh uh follow that on the I I've seen that on the on your uh the Facebook, the the Warrior the UP Warriors Facebook. Yep, yep, Michigan UP Veterans Hockey Club. Yes, we'll make sure we show that. No, and I'm glad we jumped back on because are you currently living in Chastel? I am. Okay, so so somebody wanted me to ask you about the Chastel Strawberry Festival. Is that still a thing?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:20

Oh, yeah, absolutely. They they have that every every summer. I believe it's in June.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:26

Yeah. But they have a strawberry queen and they have a strawberry create and and uh shortcake, and it's it's they shut down the main road for it.

unknown 1:15:35

It's a it's a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:36

Oh we like our strawberry shortcake. I love our strawberries.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:40

That is awesome. I'm glad I'm glad we got to uh hear about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:46

That's great. I don't know where you're getting your information, but man, you are just like spot on.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:53

Okay, well, hey, thank you for doing this, and uh I really, really appreciate this conversation. This uh episode was edited and produced by Daisy Media. You can follow the Trevor Buck podcast on Apple and Spotify. And please like, follow, and subscribe. Leave this one, especially this one, a five-star review.